With the arrival of .24 and the contracts it brought came an entirely new way of advancing through the tech tree and going further than any Kerbal has gone before. Although after playing for 30 Kerbin days, completing 59 contracts, and advancing past Tier 5 of the science tree, I have come to the conclusion that getting all the science around Kerbin's various biomes would be an inefficient way of procuring science quickly. This is due in part to the fact that even low profit contracts can offer science greater then 50 points all with little effort, and that there is an abundance of these contracts early on, thus accelerating you through the tech tree faster and making interplanetary travel much easier.

I know this is the first patch with contracts so tweaking will be done to balance them with the rest of the game, so I would like to hear from you all and see what kind of things could be done to improve the flow of the game and balance contracts in the early stages of the game.

TL:DR: Biome science around Kerbin is slow and tedious, and contracts can earn you more points quicker, ideas on balancing early game?

The limiting factor is always going to be skill, regardless of how many parts you have access to. You aren't going to land on the mun with tier 7 parts until after you're capable of getting into orbit with Tier 1 parts.

Here's a decent trick to let you get more science out of early flights (that you may have seen before), once out on EVA you can right click the capsule and click "take data" until it doesn't show up, when you get back inside the capsule it will let you do another crew report (do it in a different biome) without having to transmit the previous report.

I've has this idea for a mod that would base progression on historical achievement/realism.

The game would start out with early aircraft parts (or if you like rocketry better, it would start with rockets with almost all jet tech already unlocked). Science would no longer unlock parts/nodes, they would unlock automatically based on achievements of your creations through contracts (attain an altitude of 10000m using jets and you unlock turbojet engines! Or similar). This way you would have to use what you have before you can unlock what you need. Rocketry could be introduced via a contract for attaining supersonic speed by giving you experimental access to a small rocket tank/engine, then progress into sub orbital flights from there.

Science would primarily be gained through these achievements (along with finds) and it would be used to lower part cost based on what you want to further research (if you use a certain type of engine a lot, use science to research it more to lower cost) but would also be available in lower quantities for biomes/orbit/etc. to encourage exploration.

Does this sound like a good idea? I'm still fleshing it out but I'm trying to get an opinion on it before I start trying to figure out how to build it

I figure it can be divided into two main parts, the first of which does a complete reconfiguration of all science and contract earnings, and the other is just a custom tech tree to intro planes first. The latter seems easier to accomplish at the moment

Did you know that the first purpose-built, manned, rocket powered aeroplane was built before the invention of the basic jet engine , in 1929?
In any case, why should Kerman history mirror human history?

That's the point of a mod, not everyone has to download it. In any case, rockets predate powered flight by thousands of years, but rockets didn't really (useful) widespread use until basically WWII-onward, before then they were just a "spray and pray" type weapon, and even the V2's weren't all that accurate considering the impact sites (not that they weren't overall effective). Having a Bell X-1 type flight would be a good introduction to the larger rockets the game offers, but only for people who want a historical type playthrough

It was useless before 0.24. I got into the game in 0.23 and the extent of my science on Kerbin was to test any science devices on vertical ascent, the launchpad, and runway, and perhaps once in the ocean when I splashed down.

And I'm bloody grateful for it as well because science on Kerbin is terribly mundane. When I got into this game I wanted to go to Mun, not piss about on Kerbin.

When I first got the game I mainly did Sandbox because I had a mate who also owned the game and he had spent a fair amount of time collecting science on Kerbin (leading me to assume I had to do such).

When I actually got round to Career I was going for Minmus within the hour. I did a few trips to Minmus at by the time I was done with it I had unlocked everything I needed to explore wherever I wanted. I then did Duna and Ike (skipping Mun), and had already finished the science tree.

I suppose my point is that the science progression of 0.24 (both in general and specifically with regards to the necessity of gaining science on Kerbin) is hardly a new experience.

I agree with you on that one. For the seasoned players it doesn't affect us as much, but for newer players they could see it as a necessity to explore the planet to progress through the tree and make getting to the mun and minmus easier.

I think they should remove Science rewards for any of the repeatable contracts. The big culprits here are the Part Testing contracts, which seem to scale the Science payout to how much the parts cost to unlock. You can get 100+ science points for testing an engine on the launchpad!

My vision for the game would be that "commercial" contracts (part testing, orbital rescue, routine science gathering, etc) would give Funds, but no Science and little Prestige. Achievements (one-time contracts like setting records or exploring new planets) would give big Prestige rewards, but little Funds or Science (and no funds in advance). The primary source of Science would be running experiments, as was already the case before the update. You'd work on commercial contracts in order to fund exploratory and scientific missions.

I agree, the testing upon landing are the easiest to exploit and should be toned down. I just don't think they have a real measurement of the difficulty of contracts as you progress (eg: testing the new 4 engine bottom stage on the mun vs in atmosphere) and how they interacts with the tech tree and funding.

I think they should switch things around so that contracts ask you to perform science experiments in particular biomes. So the first one could be "recover a crew report from in flight at Kerbin".

Then, to discover new parts, you do tests on parts you already have. To develop new liquid rocket engines, test the basic one in different conditions. To develop new science instruments, run tests on your capsule or other instruments you have. Make rocket science a more concrete type of engineering, and have things like mystery goo and ravioli detectors be a way to generate profit.

Rescue missions, flag planting, and similar contracts can stick around as profit makers too.

I think the better than starting manned mod with improve the difficulty once it comes out for .24. Doing a duna return mission in 23.5 with BTSM was by far the hardest thing i have done in KSP and it was necessary to do it to progress down the science tree.

Getting science from Kerbin has always been a pretty lousy way to advance: the science multiplier for Kerbin is 0.3-0.4x on the surface, 0.7x flying, and 1x space, while for Mun it's 4x surface, 3x space, and for Minmus it's 5x and 4x.

That's >10x difference on the surface and 3-4x in space - even accounting for the extra atmo science, a Mun biome will give you roughly 3x the total science of a Kerbin biome. So you can (and should) do the low-effort stuff like getting science from around KSC and opportunistically on returning from a mission, but actively hunting Kerbin biomes has never been really worthwhile from a science point of view.